“Oh, I rather like it.”
“Um!” was all the answer Sid made, as he prepared for bed, while Tom also undressed.
Tom Parsons had come to college, not because he wanted to have “a good time,” nor because it was the fashion, nor because his father had the money to send him. Tom came because he wanted to gain knowledge, to fit himself for a place in life, and he earnestly wanted to learn. At the same time he did not belong to the class known as “digs.” Tom was a sport-loving lad, and it needed but a look at his well-set head, on broad shoulders, his perfectly rounded neck, his long, lithe limbs, small hips and deep chest, to tell that he was an athlete of no little ability.
Tom’s hair was inclined to curl, especially when he was warm from running or wrestling, and when it clung about his bronzed forehead in little brown ringlets, he was an attractive figure, as more than one girl had admitted. But Tom, to give him his due, never thought about this.
He was tall and straight, and he could do more than the regulation on the bars, or with dumbbells, while on the flying rings, or at boxing, you would want to think twice before you challenged him.
But Tom’s specialty, if one may call it such, was on the baseball diamond. He had played in all the positions ever since he was a little lad, and he and the other country boys laid out a diamond in a stubble field, with stones for bases, and a hickory club for a bat. But Tom had a natural bent toward pitching, and he gradually developed it, principally by his own unaided efforts, together with what he could pick up out of athletic books, or what was told to him by his companions. In twirling the ball Tom’s muscles, hardened by work on the farm, served him in good stead.
For Tom Parsons was a farmer lad, though, perhaps, not a typical one. His father was fairly well-to-do, and had a large acreage in the town of Northville. Tom was an only son, though there were two sisters, of whom he thought the world.
When Tom had finished his course at the village academy, and had expressed a wish to go to college, his father consented. He furnished part of the money, and the rest Tom supplied himself, for he was an independent sort of lad, and thought it his duty to take part of his savings to gain for himself a better education than was possible in his home town.
So Tom, as you have seen, came to Randall, and of the manner of his arrival, due to a combination of circumstances, you have been duly informed. He made two resolutions before coming. One was to stand well in his classes, and the other—well, you shall learn the other presently.